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Only comradeship helped them--not always jolly,
if they happened to be a class above their fellows, a moral peg above
foul-mouthed slum-dwellers and men of filthy habits, but splendid if
they were in their own crowd of decent, laughter-loving, companionable
lads. Eleven months' training! Were they ever going to the front? The
war would be over before they landed in France. . . Then, at last,
they came.


III

It was not until July of 1915 that the Commander-in-Chief announced
that a part of the New Army was in France, and lifted the veil from
the secret which had mystified people at home whose boys had gone from
them, but who could not get a word of their doings in France.
I saw the first of the "Kitchener men," as we called them then. The
tramp of their feet in a steady scrunch, scrunch, along a gritty road
of France, passed the window of my billet very early in the mornings,
and I poked my head out to get another glimpse of those lads marching
forward to the firing-line.


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